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Monday, January 05, 2015

Green Dot Site Likely in SW Seattle

West Seattle Blog editor, Tracy Record, has discovered that it appears Green Dot is trying to remodel a church building in the Roxbury area of West Seattle.

I note that the Pacific Charter School Development is a capital building/renovation group funded by the Gates Foundation, the NewSchools Venture Fund, Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation - in short, ALL the usual suspects. It's based on this:Venture Philanthropy These organizations support PCSD’s adherence to the “triple bottom line” philosophy embraced by some of today’s most creative and result-focused philanthropists: green, sustainable financially, and incorporating the highest possible social return on their invested dollars.

Green Dot is planning to open multiple schools over the next few years
and Pacific has partnered with Green Dot to build several of these
facilities. For more information, visit www.greendot.org.

The CEO of Pacific, John Sun, has this on his Linked-In page:

• Oversee facilities development in Los Angeles, Boston, Memphis, and Seattle/Tacoma • Established Seattle office to serve the Washington State charter school sector
• Build relationships with public charter school leaders to support their facilities needs
• Develop partnerships with local elected officials, school district leadership and other key stakeholders
• Defined PCSD growth strategy that will increase public charter
schools’ ability to access public bond funding, allow PCSD to serve new
geographies and increase PCSD revenues
For a Green Dot school in Tacoma they have leased a former elementary, John R. Rogers Elementary from "a PCSD subsidiary" which is then subleasing to Green Dot Washington.
I have a call into The Jesus Center as they seem to still be an active church with fitness center.

This looks like it is the old Safeway building. From Green Dot's website about the Seattle School:

Seattle 6-12 SchoolSchool location: South Seattle (site to be determined) Opening: August 2016 Grades served in 2016: 6 Grades served at full enrollment: 6-12 Total projected student enrollment: 1200 students

Is this how the school district is planning on dealing with the middle school/high school capacity issues? Let the charters in?

@ 8th grade parent.Yes, that's exactly how the enrollment crisis will be solved. Watch the neighborhood flock to Green Dot. Seriously. The losers will be the SPS middle-high schools. Fewer kids, fewer dollars, less reason to invest in the SPS staff, programs and buildings and meantime a pumped up by CA and Gates Green Dot offering. Let the death cycle for SPS in the SW commence. Just like the privateers want.

If I'm remembering the numbers, we're going to be about 2,000 high school seats short north of the ship canal in 2019, *after* Lincoln re-opens.

I find it very interesting that the first few charter schools in Seattle are likely to be highschools (the one in the ID and now this 6-12 in SW Seattle), but I'm having trouble seeing how this solves the capacity problems unless we draw some very weird boundaries and/or move programs currently housed in north and central Seattle to the schools further south that either already have some space or might have space after these charters open.

It would be interesting to see the high school projections for 2016 and beyond for the entire district (not just north end), then factor in these two schools and see how it changes.

If we're going to be about 2000 seats short for north end HS seats after Lincoln reopens and fills, then we'll likely be even MORE than 2000 seats short in the years immediately prior to its reopening. Green Dot looks to be doing a roll-up, so won't see its first class of 9th graders until 2019--which won't provide any relief in the short term. Summit looks like the only new HS seats that will come online before then, aside from whatever super secret plans the district is hatching...

Po3, theoretically, every K-12 child in the state has state education dollars attached to them (about $5300K).

Some parents choose private so those dollars are not used.

Charters are public schools so the dollars follow the kid. (This is the argument pro-charter people are happy to give.)

So your local district public school loses 50 kids and loses those dollars (with seemingly no kids to replace them) so you can see how it would be a whammy for a school and a dent for a district. (Seattle is filled up so they might be somewhat relieved but Tacoma is furious because of the money they estimate they may lose in the next couple of years, about $5M.)

That's how districts lose money. The state doesn't, districts do.

Charters, because some portion of those state dollars go to the state authorizer for oversight, don't get the entire amount. BUT, they are not hiring unionized people saving themselves many thousands of dollars.

This issue of facilities is probably the largest one for charters and why Gates set up this group to help facilitate finding and renovating buildings.

You will see - as California and others have -that you end up with far fewer "homegrown" charters because of the heavy lift it involves. If you are not a Gates-annointed charter, you won't get the help that a Summit or Green Dot will.

And tell me again what the problem with opening "charter" seats is? ????

It takes money "away" from SPS???? Money that won't be used to educate kids? District says that kids cost more to educate than they receive (eg. McCleary). So, isn't taking kids out a savings? Hard to see how that's a problem.

Lori, the historical pattern of charter schools is that they don't try to compete with schools where families are by and large happy. The major problem most people have with the north-end schools is that they're crowded, not anything to do with instruction or facilities per se. I really don't think a charter could compete up there - and where would they put it?

And "Reading", by that logic if the district had no enrollment at all, they'd be rolling in the dough, right? Since every kid costs more to educate than the state forks over? Something's wrong with that reasoning.

@Reading, your comment makes sense until you start looking at the realities of funding a school, especially an elementary. Let's say for the sake of argument that you have a K-5 school of 300 students, 50 in each grade. That fits really nicely with two classes per grade, 25 students in each class. So far, so good.

Now, let's say a charter opens up nearby. It pulls 5% of the students from our hypothetical school. That's 15 students or ~$75K in state money. That's roughly the cost of a full-time teacher. Once you add in the operations levy money the charter will eventually get too, it's definitely 1 to 1.5 full time salaries lost from the school's budget.

When you go back to class sizes, each grade is now 47 or 48 students. That's a hair small for two classes per grade (at least how SPS does it), but way to big for 1.5 classes per grade and mixed-age learning.

The school is now stuck. They've lost a teacher's worth of revenue, but they can't cut a teacher. That's how charters bleed money out of schools.

When funding is short, Sugar Daddy Gates hands over millions of dollars to charter school operations for set-up costs.

How will this help schools like Franklin High School with 70% FRL population? Schools are able to fund services when enrollment is high, taking dollars from public schools hurts the remaining students.

Let's remember: There are 20,000-30,000 homeless students in Wa. State and the number is growing by 500 each year.

Josh, I agree. I don't think these planned charters help the capacity problem at the high school level. Others upthread seemed to think so, but I completely agree with your assessment.

What I see/worry will happen is that these charters open up spaces at southend schools that can't afford to lose students (as Eric B explains), and, when the capacity situation breaks up north, we're going to need to bus kids from the north to the schools that have room, which will be in the south end.

Nothing wrong with that per se, except it's the opposite of a neighborhood school system, which the district has been trying to create. The commutes alone, on public transportation, will be tough, especially if bells time remain as they are now.

It's all speculation on my part, of course. Maybe there's a viable plan in the works that ensures that every north end high school student has a spot somewhat near to home and doesn't involved split shifts or year-round schooling. I will state again that it just astounds me that there is so little community engagement happening on this issue. The same northend families who spent years not knowing how they were gonna resolve the middle school capacity situation are now staring down the barrel of the high school mess, with no plan or stated vision yet.

Ditto what Lori said re: the lack of community engagement on HS capacity issues. Their continued silence on the issue is incredibly frustrating.

At the beginning of the school year an SPS staffer told me they wouldn't have their new 5-yr projections available until May 2015. Let's just hope they follow through with that, and that the projections appear to be accurate--and that they then use the data to move forward WITH the community!

The funny thing about this, of course, is that there is a vacant school building right by there, E C Hughes.

Of course E. C. Hughes couldn't hold anything like 1,200 students and it isn't set up to serve as a high school - no science labs, etc.

But folks have been saying that a middle/high school capacity crunch is coming to West Seattle and the District will need to expand Chief Sealth into the Denny space and move Denny into Boren and it was therefore foolish to allow STEM K-8 to have Boren.

So, if that's the case, then why didn't the District buy this church and convert it to a middle school as the new location for Denny when Sealth expands or as the new location for STEM? If the District needs property, then why aren't they finding it when the charters can?

So isn't the Principal of Interagency a sitting member of the Green Dot board? So when the issue of space, allocation and budget comes up maybe they can turn those into charters and use those resources.

<Back to NewsGreen Dot Schools Earn Top Rankings in U.S. News & World Report's Annual Survey of High SchoolsPosted 04/24/2013 05:25PMLos Angeles – Six Green Dot Public Schools campuses are among the top high schools in the country, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report’s list of America’s Best High Schools released today. Four schools – Ánimo Jackie Robinson Charter High School, Ánimo South Los Angeles Charter High School, Ánimo Venice Charter High School and Oscar de la Hoya Ánimo Charter High School – earned their top nationwide rankings for the second year in a row. Ánimo Inglewood Charter High School and Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School also earned national recognition from U.S. News.

“We are honored our schools continue to earn top rankings,” said Green Dot CEO Marco Petruzzi, noting Green Dot uses an academic model designed to create small, safe, high-performing learning environments to meet individual student needs at all of its 18 schools. “This recognition is a tribute to the hard work of our students, parents, teachers and administrators at all of our schools in our mission to prepare students for college, leadership and life.”

Petruzzi added that last year Green Dot graduated more than 1,400 students, sending nearly 1,300 on to college, the most of any charter school organization in the nation. In its 13-year history, Green Dot schools have graduated more than 6,500 students with more than 90% being accepted to college.

According to U.S. News & World Report, schools are evaluated on two key principles: that a great high school must serve all its students well, not just those bound for college, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes.

U.S. News uses three tiers of evaluation to determine its rankings: 1) whether a school’s students are performing better than their peers; 2) whether its least-advantage students are outperforming similar students in their state; and 3) how well the school is preparing students for college. Those schools ranking among the top 100 in the nation produced the highest college-level achievement for the greatest percentage of students, according to U.S. News.

For its 2013 Best High Schools rankings, U.S. News analyzed information from 21,776 public high schools in 49 states and the District of Columbia using data from the 2010-2011 school year and ranked six Green Dot Public Schools among the top eight percent of public high schools in the nation.

For more information, visit http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools

Parents reading this might be very interested in a school like this. 1200 students seems a lot bigger than their other schools and small classes they tout. How much do they cherry pick their students and how many leave before graduation?

Oh I am no Green Dot or Charter school fan, I just thought it was interesting that some of their schools make the best high schools in the nation list. I did read the Diane Ravitch article and noted that this Green Dot High School did not make the list.

US News and World Reports are not a news journal it is business journal that games the ranks of their "lists" When LA Times does an investigative series on Green Dot and finds problems, when other issues are found in other communities note that they don't respond to those. Why? because they game the system. Here are some links to tell you what BS those "lists" are

Yes as Parents are experts and read lists put together by corrupt and secretive sources. Yes you get what you pay for and if you pay enough you get enough. The UW Hospitals are on the US News lists as "best" yet when you actually look at their Medicare rating notsogood. Remember money buys influence and people believe the money trail as actually researching and asking questions about the veracity of how the data was obtained and the financial source takes time, effort and intelligence. Qualities that lack in many of the sherple.

I have lived in this neighborhood my whole life. When Safeway attempted to build a store, several attempts were made to buy out neighbors homes....so finally they and the neighbors agreed to an addendum made by Safeway and the City that no building could be built higher than the existing. I believe this was filed with city. Because when Safeway tried to sell, many wanted to build up but couldn't according to the agreement. If anybody knows how I can find out, we need to see if this is true. I agree with mirmac that having to marijuana stores across the street from each other may be a reason to not choose this location, I hope so. DO NOT WANT this in my neighborhood. If anybody has any ideas how to stop this, I'm in.

Education Acroynms

Advanced Learning - SPS' three-tier program for advanced learners. Made up of APP, Spectrum and ALOs. (Note: the name of the district program is "Advanced Learning Services and Programs" but these three programs fall under "Highly Capable Services" of AL Services and Programs.

ALO - Advanced Learning Opportunity, the third tier of SPS' Advanced Learning program

AP - Advanced Placement. A national program of college-level classes given in high schools.

APP - Accelerated Progress Program. One of the levels of the Advanced Learning Program. NOTE: the name of this program is now "HIGHLY CAPABLE COHORT." This change occurred in 2014.

ASB - Associated Student Body. High school leadership groups.

AYP - Adequate Yearly Progress. Part of NCLB.

BEX - Building Excellence. SPS' capital renovation/rebuilding program that is funded via the BEX levy. Every 3 years there is the Operations levy and either the BEX or BTA levies as those two levies rotate in six year cycles).

BLT - Building Leadership Team. Staff members at a school who meet regularly to discuss building issues.

BTA - Buildings, Technology, Academics. The major maintenance/other capital fund for SPS. Originally BTA was to cover major maintenance like HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), roofs, waterlines, etc.) but now covers wide swaths of items like athletic fields, technology and funding academic needs.

CAICEE - Community Advisory Committee for Investing in Educational Excellence. Created by former Superintendent Manhas in 2008, to issue a report about reform recommendations for SPS.

CSIP - Continuous School Improvement Plan, the plan for improvement for each school as required by state law.

EOC - End of Course Assessments, given in math and science, required for high school graduationESEA - Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the federal law that governs education, includes the NCLB accountability provisions.

e-STEM or e-STEAM - STEM or STEAM curriculum with an environmental focus.

FACMAC - Facilities and Capacity Management Advisory Committee. A district committee comprises of an all-volunteer citizen group created in 2012 to help bring research and ideas to capacity management issues in the district.

FERPA - Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. A federal law that protects students' privacy

FRL - Free and reduced lunch.

FTE - Full Time Equivalent

FY - Fiscal Year

Highly Capable Services - NEW name (as of 2014) as umbrella name for these programs: Highly Capable Cohort (formerly APP), Spectrum and ALO (Advanced Learning Opportunities).

HSPE - High School Proficiency Exam, state assessment that replaced the WASL for 10th graders, required for graduation

HQT - Highly Qualified Teacher, a standard set by federal law

IA - Instructional Assistant

IB - International Baccalaureate program. An international program of advanced classes that can either be taken as stand alone or as part of an overall IB program.

IDEA - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The federal law that governs special education

MAP - Measures of Academic Progress. A computer-based adaptive assessment made by NWEA and originally purchased by the district for use as a district-wide formative assessment but now used for a wide variety of purposes.

MSP - Measurement of Student Progress, the state proficiency assessment that replaced the WASL for students in grades 1-8

MTSS - Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

NCLB - No Child Left Behind, a provision of the federal education law, ESEA, introduced during the George W. Bush administration